


All we have left

by SharinaMay



Series: Rumbelle Showdown: Moongirl [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Rumbelle Showdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-12
Updated: 2015-03-12
Packaged: 2018-03-17 13:13:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3530696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharinaMay/pseuds/SharinaMay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in Storybrooke after Zelena is defeaded. Belle breaks the Dark One’s Curse but it brings back Mr Gold, not Rumplestilskin</p>
            </blockquote>





	All we have left

**Author's Note:**

> Showdown prompt: Rain falling upward, Belle ponders Gold, Darkness light softness.

After all they’d been through Belle never thought, that she would ever feel like this. Rumple being Zelena’s slave had been a nightmare. But every single look he gave her in secret held so much love and adoration that she knew they would be okay, somehow.

Even when she thought him dead, she had held on to his memory like a drowning soul to a lifesaver. But standing next to Gold, and Rumple being gone, proved to be almost too much to bear.

When they saved him and she broke his curse with True Love’s Kiss, it hadn’t left behind the Spinner from the Enchanted Forest. Instead they were confronted with Mr. Gold. The one Regina’s curse had created and who apparently couldn’t remember anything after the night Emma first arrived in Storybrooke. They couldn’t figure out what went wrong. So they were stuck in Storybrooke again, working on a way to get home. And their best chance to do that was brining Rumple back.

With Reginas help Belle managed to convince Gold, that she had worked for him the past two years. And though he was suspicious, he couldn’t deny the contract before him (Regina’s courtesy) or Belle’s knowledge about his shop and financial activities. It was Dove who convinced him of the charade. Gold trusted the man, even more than the legal contract in front of him.

Belle imagined that Rumple had felt this way when she had lost her memory and thrown Chip against the wall. At least Lacey had some kind of attraction to Rumple’s dark side. Gold on the other hand seemed to feel nothing like that for her. Most days Belle couldn’t figure out what he was up to. He would be all nice (at least his version of it) and teasing. The next day he would sneer at her and be grumpy. He was so much like Rumple and at the same time so different that it confused her to no end. They shared the sarcasm and the streak for dark humor. But Gold didn’t giggle in this high pitch she missed so much, nor did he ever use endearments. And after almost three months of dusting and rearranging his shop, trying to build some kind of intimacy and trust, he still wouldn’t open up to her. Belle was starting to lose hope.

A loud crash ripped her from her musings, followed by a stream of profanities in a deep Scottish brogue she hadn’t heard in months. She made her way to the backroom where Gold had been repairing an old clock.

“Oh my God, what happened?” He was kneeling on the floor, hand against his bleeding temple. She grabbed the first cloth near her and squeezed it between his hand and injury. Together they managed to maneuver him to the cot.

“We should get you to the hospital!”

“Nonsense, this is only a cut. It already stopped bleeding, see?” He lifted her hand to prove his point, but Belle wasn’t going to stop fretting.

“Let me clean it up.” Quickly she got the first aid kit out and started fixing him up.

He stared grumbling about the clock that caused his trouble. He sounded like a small boy that blamed the table for his pain after running right into it.

“Don’t be angry with the rain; it simply doesn’t know how to fall upwards.” He winced when she pressed the cotton ball with antiseptic against his wound. Only then Belle realized that she was doing it quite firmly. “Sorry.” She tried to be gentler.

“Nabokov? Who on earth quotes Nabokov?” He was grumpy again.

“You did.” It didn’t seem like the cut was very deep. She examined it closely.

“What?” Now he sounded confused.

“You used to quote books in the beginning when I wasn’t feeling at ease.” And that wasn’t a complete lie. After he’d given her the public library he used to quote authors and books all the time, showing her the different literature of this realm. At some point she thought he Googled and memorized them solemnly to impress her. It had worked very well.

The Nabokov quote however was special. Whenever he displeased her somehow, he said it, followed by ‘I’m sorry darling, I love you’ and a kiss. God, how she longed to kiss him again.

He grunted humorlessly while she reached for the Band-Aids finishing her ministrations.

“There, all done” she looked down to him, realizing for the first time how close they actually were. She was standing between his legs, one of his hands rested on his cane, the other laid on his knee looking like he was about to reach out to her. Her own hand was tangled in his hair, caressing it gently.

He cleared his throat and she found his eyes. He was looking at her suspiciously, probably trying to figure out what game she was playing. But then, for a second, she saw it. The same look Rumple gave her after he caught her falling from the ladder. Like a blind man seeing the light for the first time.

The bell chimed announcing a customer and suddenly he was Gold again, guarded, cold. “You should probably get that. I need to change.”

She nodded stepping away from him, making her way to the curtain. She could’ve screamed in frustration, when would people finally stop interrupting!

“Thank you, Belle.” He said it right before she could disappear. Her heart started beating faster, her breath caught in her throat. She turned her head back to him, smiled as warmly as she could and nodded. After that she made her way out to the counter.

Maybe there was hope after all.


End file.
